It ain’t Round-Up Day but at least the heat is back on and now I get to go outside in the frickin’ snow. Wheee!

For those of you remaining inside where it’s nice and cozy - warm your hands (and minds) over these interesting tid-bits:

From the amazing Susan Crawford’s blog: she details (in the U.S. at least) the non-discrimination obligations wireless traffic carriers. The antics of the telcos down there permeate into every country around the world thanks to the excessive lobbying and bullying of the corporations and their U.S. government turds toads, so it’s worth paying attention to:

The big game here, the place this is all going, is the battle over access to the internet. We don’t have any statutory language making clear what “internet access” means - what it requires, what the limits are to “reasonable network management,” and all the rest. This PK petition is an incremental step - it’s asking for some definition of the limits to short code management in the wireless world. But that’s potentially a proxy for a larger move.

Content is not king online, as it turns out. Communication is. Raph Koster has a big recent presentation up on his blog telling the gaming world that their lunch is being eaten by the web. Everything’s flowing to the web. As Koster puts it:

the hot platform is the net

the hot audience is the non-gamer

the hot feature is other players

the hot technology is connectivity

the hot game is a mini-game

But the web world is under tremendous pressure in the US, as it is worldwide. No standardized definition of “internet access” in a place where there isn’t a lot of competition for access is leading to an awful lot of discretion and control being placed in the mitts of the carriers.

On the surface Crawford’s writing seems to dwell on the densely arcane world of telecommunication law in the U.S. but she has the ability to carve away the fat and fog to reveal the consequences of the decisions (and indecisions) that are shaping our access to this new world of information. Give it a read.

And TorrentFreak reports on how the greedy copyright Scrooges of the U.K. Performing Right Society is forcing charities to pay royalties because they let children sing Christmas carols on their premises. Oh Fuck Off!

The staff at a charity also received a visit from a PRS officer who declared that because a staff radio in the kitchen could be overheard by the public in their tea-room, they would need a license. The charity, Dam House, which was originally set up to save a historic building and offer community and health facilities, had to have a fund-raising event to raise the money for the license.

However, having purchased a license, this wasn’t the end of the matter. The PRS then started asking more questions, and when they discovered that kids sing in a carol concert there at Christmas, they declared that the premises were under licensed. Yes, of course - the PRS wanted yet more money.

Merry Fucking Christmas, kids - now pay up.

Fuckers.

And, finally, this report from Ars Technica on how Congressman Hollyood, Howard Berman (D-CA), wants Congress to take another look at the DMCA - to make it even worse!

Berman chairs the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, and this morning oversaw a hearing on the PRO-IP Act, a bill that could boost statutory damages for copyright infringement and create a special IP enforcement office in the executive branch as well as a new IP division at the Department of Justice. Before witness testimony got underway, Berman mused aloud about things the bill did not contain but which he would like to revisit in the future.

Berman believes that the DMCA, in particular, needs reforming, but not in the ways that consumers have clamored for. Instead, the congressman wants to look again at the issue of “safe harbor” provisions currently extended to ISPs for infringing content flowing across their networks. He wants to examine the “effectiveness of takedown notices” under the DMCA, and he’d like to take another look at whether filtering technology has advanced to the point where Congress ought to mandate it in certain situations.

The ideas could not be more pleasing to companies like Viacom, which is currently suing YouTube over the issue of takedown notices, claiming that simply adhering to the DMCA takedown notice system is not good enough. The MPAA, which has been pushing for ISPs to adopt video filtering on their networks, should also be thrilled.

By the time these cretins are finished there won’t be any culture eft and the only true entertainment any of will have is jamming their flaming skulls on top of the Whitehouse fence. And then we’ll all sing whatever fucking songs we want to.

That’s it. That’s all. For today. Be happy. Stay angry. Stay active. Eat healthy. Stop touching yourself - in public.

And now it’s on with the coat and gloves and out into the wet and chilly wilds of Toronto. And when I return my home will be toasty and warm.

Cheers.